The End of the Arab of the Future (A Youth in the Middle East Vol. 1)

Riad is a teenager growing up in the French region of Brittany, where he lives with his mother and brother and attends high school in Rennes. But his adolescence is anything but typical. Born to a Syrian father and a French mother, Riad spent much of his early childhood in Libya, rural Syria, and France—moving through contrasting worlds, political ideologies, and daily absurdities. Years earlier, his father—charismatic, authoritarian, and obsessed with dictators and with building a utopian Arab society—abducted Riad’s second younger brother, Fadi, and returned to Syria, leaving behind a fractured family.

At 14, Riad navigates puberty, isolation, and the pressures of French society, while haunted by the absence of his father and brother, and the sadness of his mother. He turns to books, heavy metal, and drawing as refuge. The tone is darkly comic and sharply observant, capturing both the universal pains of adolescence and the surreal contradictions of the 1990s. Blending personal story and social commentary, this standalone volume offers a biting, poignant portrait of a young man coming of age in a world that feels both familiar and foreign.

The End of the Arab of the Future is the first book in a two-volume series that concludes the critically acclaimed autobiographical graphic novel begun in Arab of the Future.